Malik takes issue with some of the British left’s handling of the Salman Rushdie (wikipedia) affair:
“It has now become widely accepted that we live in a multicultural world, and that in such a world it is important not to cause offence to other peoples and cultures.”
There is an important difference between having problems with the Muslim world, and having problems with your own society’s conflicted views of the Muslim/outside world (I think Malik means the intellectually adrift, culturally relativistic, identity politicking left).
He argues that 3 myths persist:
“The first myth is that the controversy over Rushdie’s novel was driven by religion. It wasn’t. It was a political conflict.”
“The second myth is that all Muslims were offended by The Satanic Verses.”
“The third myth lies in the perception of the anti-Rushdie campaigners as male, middle-aged, poorly educated, badly integrated…”many, equally, were young, left-wing, articulate, educated, integrated.”
and his main conclusion:
“So why were these people drawn to the anti-Rushdie campaign? Largely because of disenchantment with the secular left, on the one hand, and the institutionalisation of multicultural policies on the other.”
Would Malik indict the British left itself, or is it a larger problem? Is it the current excesses of the left and British society (classical liberalism lost in the shuffle?) or something deeper?
See Also On This Site: Theodore Dalrymple Still Attacking Multi-Culturalism In Britain…Martha Nussbaum In Dissent–Violence On The Left: Nandigram And The Communists Of West Bengal…From The American Conservative: Going Off The Rawls–David Gordon On John Rawls
WE ALL KNEW
SALMAN RUSHDIE WAS A HOMOSEXUAL THAT ONLY COULD PRODUCED STINK TURD FOR HIS FAN
&
A PIECE OF SHIT LIKE HIM COULD ONLY WRITE ALL ABOUT:
BULLSHIT
COWSHIT
ELEPHANTSHIT
FUCKIN’SHIT
E T C
SO TELL THAT LIAR
TO GO KILL HIMSELF
& GO TO HELL
Clearly, you have a strong opinion. Isn’t it nice to be able to express it without fear of death?
………By …..The British Left in the twenty-first century has exhibited high levels of ideological antagonism toward Israel per se. The easy-to-hand explanation is that this is a manifestation of the new antisemitism. While there is undoubtedly commentary that many would interpret as repeating anti-Jewish stereotypes of the past this does not explain how the British Left has moved from embracing Israel in 1948 to its present position. It is argued here that this transition began to take place before the settlement drive on the West Bank and Gaza during Britains period of decolonization but the seeds of such an approach were planted by Lenin well over a century ago……..THE OLD LEFT AND THE NEW LEFT..Since the end of the peace process in the 1990s and the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada an important feature in the debate on the Israel-Palestine imbroglio has been a questioning of the legitimacy of Israel as a nation-state by sections of the political Left and the liberal and cultural intelligentsia in Britain…Such opinion has broadly moved from passionately supporting the right of the Jews to national self-determination in 1948 by figures such as Aneurin Bevan Bertrand Russell and Tony Benn to questioning that right over 60 years later.